Date: 1903
Source: Lenin Miscellany, volume 26
Pages: 335-336

CORRECTION TO THE CORRESPONDENCE "AMONG THE PEASANTS (A LETTER FROM A SOC.-DEMOCRAT)"
No. 10 *VPERED*, MARCH 18 (2) 1903.

Among the Peasants. (A Letter from a Soc.-Democrat).

We, soc.-dems., primarily in view of the crisis that has thus far bound the party hand and foot, [completely forgot about] paid insufficient attention to the enormous, spontaneously mounting force of the village masses...

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CORRECTIONS TO V. VOROVSKII'S ARTICLE "THE FRUITS OF DEMAGOGUERY."
No. 11 *VPERED*, MARCH 23 (10) 1903.

The split in the party, initiated by the Mensheviks [several months ago on all fronts] after the Second Congress, found its peculiar forms in Nizhny Novgorod...

In view of this, it is best of all to turn to the booklet "What Is to Be Done?" itself and see to what extent [the soundness of] the soundness [and] the credulousness [and general practical conclusions] of the Sormovo [social-democrats] "workers" (?), who began speaking in the language of Iskra editorials, [are justified].

...Indeed, "What Is to Be Done?" was a polemical pamphlet, [intended for the practical needs of party workers. And a politician, a practical man, stands on a completely different point of view than a sociologist, a theorist. Whereas the latter investigates the origin and cause of phenomena, the former takes these phenomena as a historical fact, as the starting point of his reasoning and conclusions.]
wholly devoted to criticizing the economist wing in the then social-democracy, to pointing out and refuting the specific errors of this wing. It would be absurd if, in a pamphlet treating "the burning questions of our movement," Lenin were to set about proving that the development of ideas, in particular scientific socialism, was and is occurring in close historical connection
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CORRECTIONS TO V. VOROVSKII'S ARTICLE "THE FRUITS OF DEMAGOGUERY"
339

with the development of productive forces, [including the greatest of them — the proletariat.] in close connection with the growth of the workers' movement generally. For [a politician] him it was important to establish the fact that nowhere has the working class yet worked its way independently to socialist ideology, that this ideology, [this class consciousness] the teaching of scientific socialism, was always brought in [by social-democratic intellectuals] by social-democracy, [and where such consciousness] [teaching] was not brought in "from outside," there the proletariat did not work its way beyond the demands of economic struggle, beyond trade-unionist consciousness. And this historical fact was laid down by Lenin in [the pamphlet*] [wholly devoted to criticizing the economist wing in the then social-democracy, to pointing out and refuting the specific errors of this wing.]
— so that therefore to people who belittled the significance of our consciousness, our doctrine (precisely to the Economists), it is necessary to remind them of the duty of a socialist to bring consciousness from outside. To what extent Plekhanov understood this simple matter before his co-optation, when he had no need to resort to literary attacks, this is best seen from the following words of his...

...Marx naturally [takes the point of view of a politician, a practical man, and] takes into account the slow spontaneous growth of the masses and counterposed [to it] to this spontaneity the consciousness of social-democracy [as two social forces, the relationship between which it is necessary to establish, as two major factors of the historical process].

...It is no wonder that Plekhanov wrote more than a year after reading Lenin's pamphlet that Lenin "comrade and fellow-member [of the Group for the Emancipation of Labor], understood no worse than we the great significance of correct theory in our cause" (Iskra No. 41). And if subsequently, in Iskra Nos. 70 and 71, Pleghanov tries to convince the reader that he always considered Lenin "incapable of dialectical thinking," then everyone will easily notice that — [using Plekhanov's favorite expression] — Plekhanov "had another purpose here"...

...the proclamation [of the notorious] Economist (if not Zubatovite) slogan of "self-activity"... the proclamation [of the principle] of the Economist phrase about the "self-activity" of the proletariat...

* The word "pamphlet" is absent from the manuscript. Ed.